The Cheyenne are a tribe of Algonquian linguistic stock who were closely allied with the Arapaho and Gros Ventre and loosely allied with the Lakota Sioux. One of the most prominent of the Plains tribes , they primarily lived and hunted on hills and prairies alongside the Missouri and Red Rivers. Originally, the Cheyenne resided in the great lakes area in Minnesota and on the Missouri River.
Here, they lived in earth-covered log houses in permanent settlements, farmed, and made pottery. However, in the late s, they began a westward migration, most likely due to competition and conflict with the Ojibwe , Arikara , and Mandan Indians.
As they migrated southwestward, their lifestyle changed to that of nomadic hunters and gatherers. In the s, the Cheyenne acquired horses from the Spanish and became expert buffalo hunters, which was the life they were leading when Lewis and Clark encountered them in in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Pushed farther into the plains by the hostile Sioux , the Cheyenne, in turn, drove the Kiowa tribe further south. In , the Cheyenne split into two groups, one inhabiting the Platte River near the Black Hills, and the other living near the Arkansas River further south in Colorado. However, bands of the tribe were known to have inhabited every state in the American West at various times.
Those who had moved to the Arkansas River found themselves in conflict with the Kiowa, who, with the Comanche, claimed the territory. Numerous battles took place between them up until when an alliance was formed with the Kiowa , Apache , and Comanche tribes. By that time, immigrant traffic had denuded the landscape along the Oregon and Santa Fe trails, splitting the Cheyenne into a northern group, destined for a Montana reservation, and the Southern Cheyenne, who, with their Southern Arapaho allies, ended up in Oklahoma.
The period from to was generally characterized by a series of treaties with the U. For the Cheyenne, military high points were their defeat of U. The low points were their losses at Summit Springs, Colorado, in and at the Battle of the Washita in and the massacre of about two hundred noncombatants by U.
After Southern Cheyenne bands and families assembled on their assigned reservation in Indian Territory. Fort Reno housed the soldiers who guarded them, and the town of El Reno grew up as a service center for the reservation and the fort. In selecting land to constitute a three-and-one-half million-acre reservation, government officials operated by administrative order, ignoring the numerous treaties signed by the Cheyenne.
Initially, Cheyenne bands gathered around government facilities at Darlington, near Fort Reno, and at Cantonment, near present Canton, where they received rations.
After a scandal involving leasing of lands to non-Indian cattlemen, the bands were allowed to disperse around the reservation. With the help of Quaker missionaries, the Cheyenne began to prosper from farming until the Dawes Act General Allotment Act of required them to surrender three million acres of their reservation and settle on acre and acre allotments. Not wanting to live on dispersed plots of land, many Cheyenne leased their allotments to non-Indians and worked in agriculture or manufacturing.
Employment was also increasingly available in the tribal government and government-sponsored projects. For Cheyenne people the extended family remains the most important social unit, consisting of grandparents and their children and grandchildren, perhaps twenty or thirty people in all. These families frequently live in adjacent houses in the towns of western Oklahoma or in a cluster of houses in more remote rural areas.
Family members see each other often and share economic resources. At the town level, there are gourd dance and veterans' groups, women's craft groups, peyote groups, and Indian Christian churches, all of which unite the local Cheyenne community across family boundaries.
These groups support dinners, dances, and powwows. The annual performance of their Arrow Renewal and Sun Dance ceremonies is a source of pride for the Southern Cheyenne, symbolizing their survival and their hope for the future. By , the Arapahos began hunting, along with their pony herd of 4, along Wolf Creek in what is now northwestern Oklahoma.
Today, the Cheyenne and Arapaho are federally recognized as one tribe and known as the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. However, while the tribes function as one Nation, each tribe still maintains their culture, traditions, customs, social dances, ceremonies, and languages. You must be logged in to post a comment.
Photograph by Alexis Bonogofsky, courtesy of Alexis Bonogofsky. Bear Butte , in South Dakota, is a site of spiritual importance where Sweet Medicine, the Cheyenne prophet, received instructions relating to the leadership and organization of the Tsistsistas Cheyenne Nation government, including the council of forty-four chiefs, the military societies, the Sacred Arrows, and all related organizations and ceremonies.
Cheyenne people possessed an extensive knowledge of botany. People harvested plants for food, medicine, ceremony, and other uses. This knowledge was based on an understanding of the season and manner in which the plant was to be harvested, prepared, and used, as well as cultural protocols to be observed.
Women often harvested plants together and were accompanied by children. Children then learned through observation and participation. Bison buffalo were the heart of the Cheyenne economy. A buffalo cow could yield pounds of food as well as resources for robes, tipi covers, and other necessities. Buffalo populations in the mid-nineteenth century were estimated at thirty to sixty million.
Buffalo are also spiritually important to the Cheyenne Nation; there are accounts that describe the buffalo helping Cheyenne warriors during battle. Tichkematse drawing of two Cheyenne men hunting buffalo , Every January young Northern Cheyenne students run a seven-day, mile journey from Fort Robinson, Nebraska, to their reservation in Montana. This event is called the Fort Robinson Spiritual Run and it commemorates the "Fort Robinson Outbreak of ," when their Cheyenne ancestors attempted to escape imprisonment and punishment at Fort Robinson.
Photograph by Bob Zeller, January 14,
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